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Reason vs. Religion
The Stranger [Seattle] ^ | 10/24/02 | Sean Nelson

Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp

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To: donh
So you stand by your statement then that

"Pharisees is just another word for jews."--donh post 1133

?
1,301 posted on 12/02/2002 9:36:25 PM PST by beavus
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To: donh
This nakedly violates Identity

How? I don't see how it violates identity even fully clothed.

1,302 posted on 12/02/2002 9:38:29 PM PST by beavus
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To: Tares
If you could, would you provide a link to these discussions?

I'm sure you don't need it, but just in case and to make sure I can do it correctly. here.

1,303 posted on 12/02/2002 10:23:36 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: beavus
How? I don't see how it violates identity even fully clothed.

Man, that is so funny Beavus!

1,304 posted on 12/02/2002 11:50:53 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: LogicWings
A statement cannot refer to itself as a negative without asserting it doesn't exist. This assertion is self contradictory, THEREFORE, invalid.

Kind of like standing in front of a mirror and stating "I do not exist.".

1,305 posted on 12/03/2002 8:02:05 AM PST by Tares
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To: beavus
"Pharisees is just another word for jews."--donh post 1133

yes, I stand by it because it is, and has been, in common usage with that meaning, according to historians and bigots for about 1600 years, as I have offered you both encyclopedic evidence, and specific examples to verify. How long will you stand on this petifogging issue before you manage to think of something meaningful to say?

1,306 posted on 12/03/2002 1:47:01 PM PST by donh
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To: beavus
This nakedly violates Identity

How? I don't see how it violates identity even fully clothed.

Draw a venn diagram around one of the slits on the shield of the 2-slit experiment. Label it "A". Label the rest of the shield "NOT(A)". Call the elements of the domain of discourse the buckyballs thrown at the shield. At a given time(t) throw one buckyball through the shield. According to classical physics, the buckyball can go through only one or the other slit at time(t). According to quantum physics, the buckyball goes through both slits at time(t).

Now lets construct the predicate representation of this phenomenon:

We examine the element buckyball(t) to determine whether it is went through A or NOT(A), and discover it went through both, so plug these values into the predicate statement, which you claim always gives the value FALSE, (A AND NOT(A)), and we discover that it now gives the value TRUE.

So which baby are you planning to throw out with the bathwater? Are you going to claim we can't draw venn diagrams on a flat plate? Are you going to claim a 60 atom molecule cannot be an element of a set? Or are you going to acknowledge that the law of identity is just a useful tool for understanding some things that are mathematically tractable, rather than a law of nature?

1,307 posted on 12/03/2002 2:00:55 PM PST by donh
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To: LogicWings; Tares
I never could. Just when I thought I'd wrangled things around to some area of agreement I'd find myself faced with jumping through those two slits again,

I don't know about the rest of the discussion (and I do agree that what we have been wrangling about come to not very much about which we were at odds after all), but you did not put the 2-slit discussion to sleep with the claim that "someday we'll understand better". That is remarkably feeble. If the law of identity is ubiquitous, than you don't have to hold your head just right to see it working in a properly constructed domain of discourse.

1,308 posted on 12/03/2002 2:08:24 PM PST by donh
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To: Tares
Kind of like standing in front of a mirror and stating "I do not exist.".

This reflection is false.

This reflection cannot be validated.

1,309 posted on 12/03/2002 2:17:26 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: LogicWings; Tares
A statement cannot refer to itself as a negative without asserting it doesn't exist. This assertion is self contradictory, THEREFORE, invalid.

...therefore, both TRUE and FALSE at the same time? Like Tares just claimed can't exist? Such statements are the the form of valid predicates. Where do you get the nerve to swipe them off the table?

In point of fact, they aren't contradictory in the straghtforward sense Tares means, although I have accepted this previously, just to get on with the argument.

They just don't have a known binary truth value. You can't say "This sentence is FALSE" has a value, because none is ever returned when you try to evaluate it. You can therefore, also not say whether such statements are elements in A or NOT(A). So you can't process the law of identity on them.

Whatever "invalid" means, "this sentence is FALSE" does not poop out of existence because you uttered the word--it is member of the set of predicate statements--said which, we are not normally shy about including in valid domains of discourse about which one may meaningfully issue proclaimations about the Law of Identity.

1,310 posted on 12/03/2002 2:29:10 PM PST by donh
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To: beavus
Probably, but the closure would make the whole argument worthwhile--and tell me that you are someone who can be argued with, rather than a moving target who slyly slips from position to position to avoid clarity.

Fascinating words coming from someone whose made a lifetime thesis out of the supposedly exclusive exacting definition of a word, to the exclusion of an actual sensible response to the meat of the question.

1,311 posted on 12/03/2002 2:37:32 PM PST by donh
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To: LogicWings; Tares
Don't you know the definition of a fanatic?

Someone who won't drop it, and won't change the subject.

Why don't you two toss a coin, and decide whether I am constantly changing the subject, or won't drop a subject?

There have been two promenent discussions in this thread I've tried to participate in: whether the Law of Identity is inviolate and ubuquitous, and whether the Gospels were the chief source of Western anti-semitism. If you will, between you, decide whether I am constantly changing the subject or constantly sticking to the subject, I will offer my profound apologies for whichever behavior was incorrect.

1,312 posted on 12/03/2002 2:44:24 PM PST by donh
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To: Tribune7
Do you believe in God? Whose?

There is only one.

So...Allah and Zeus, and the exacting God of the Laws the Jews worship? They don't exist? They are the same as your God, but with makeup on? The Chistian God of the Holy Rollers and the Mormons is the same as the christian God of the Aglicans?--these are the same God, but with makeup on? Sorry. Ask a less broad question, and maybe I'll not need clarification. I am putatively a catholic. My commitment to the notion varies from time to time.

1,313 posted on 12/03/2002 2:53:29 PM PST by donh
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To: beavus
I quote yourself:

I'll concede that there have been bigots and ignoramouses who have equated Jew with Pharisee with Christ-killer with root of Germany's problems with money-grubber with big-nosed crotchity money lender.

Tell me again who is being precious and elusive here?

1,314 posted on 12/03/2002 2:57:13 PM PST by donh
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To: donh

Where do you get the nerve to swipe them off the table?

Hey, I gotta lotta nerve, in case you haven’t noticed. But then, you should have met my Dad. Now there was a man with a lotta nerve!

They just don't have a known binary truth value. You can't say "This sentence is FALSE" has a value, because none is ever returned when you try to evaluate it. You can therefore, also not say whether such statements are elements in A or NOT(A). So you can't process the law of identity on them.

I don’t want to process the law of identity on them because by definition it has none, it contains a contradiction. All sentences that contain a contradiction have no identity, by definition.

Whatever "invalid" means, "this sentence is FALSE" does not poop out of existence because you uttered the word--it is member of the set of predicate statements--said which, we are not normally shy about including in valid domains of discourse about which one may meaningfully issue proclaimations about the Law of Identity.

It is meaningless. It isn’t true, false, up, down, right, wrong, true, untrue, blue, red, green, or anything. It is nothing. It is not valid. None of this has anything to do with anything other than that single statement. Doesn’t mean horses aren’t horses because horses aren’t sentences. It doesn’t mean logic is invalid because logic isn’t a self contradictory sentence. It can contain a self contradictory sentence and that sentence is exactly what it is, one utterly without meaning. It has no other effect outside itself. It has no other implication outside itself. None can be shown, none can be demonstrated. It is an isolated blob meaninglessness.

1,315 posted on 12/03/2002 3:52:23 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: donh
My commitment to the notion varies from time to time.

So what does God want us to do?

1,316 posted on 12/03/2002 3:57:30 PM PST by Tribune7
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To: donh
the Law of Identity is inviolate and ubuquitous

The law of identity is not inviolate and ubiquitous because it is not a 'thing.'

The Law of Identity is an absolute requirement for the mind to apprehend anything in reality. No matter what concept, thought, idea or whatever the human mind uses to picture that reality it has a one to one relationship between that 'symbol' in the human mind and the object itself that conforms to the 'law of identity.'

It doesn't matter whether 'Buckyballs' are simulaneously particles and waves because to the human mind it doesn't matter. To the human mind they are a chain of molecules in the shape of a geodesic dome that are doing something weird. Before it goes thru the two slits and after it goes through the two slits it is a 'Buckyball.' The 'mind' creates the "law of identity' because it cannot think any other way.

Call it a domain of discourse, call it ice cream, i don't care. As soon as you define anything, including what a 'domain of discourse' is, you are utterly dependent upon the law of identity or you can't understand it.

1,317 posted on 12/03/2002 4:17:18 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: donh
but you did not put the 2-slit discussion to sleep with the claim that "someday we'll understand better".

I'm not interested in putting it to sleep. I'm not trying to say we have an absolute understanding of the universe, which is the only answer you will accept in this case. There are unresolved contradictions, just as there was before Einstein came along. But the fact that they are contradictions proves logic, not the fact that there are contradictions disproves logic.

You want this 2-slit experiment to be verified with a certainty that you claim is impossible. You want all answers absolutely answerered now, and I'm admiting that that cannot be done. That doesn't invalidate logic, just the opposite. The only reason we know that we don't have all the answers is because of the contradictions that remain, something doesn't make sense. This is evidence of a faulty map. The only other conclusion is that it will forever be impossible to know.

It is you who continually defines your 'domain of discourse' as the molecular world and this supposed violation of the law of identity, who then wants to apply that 'domain of discourse' to where it doesn't apply, in the discussion of the logically fallacy of the Smuggled Premise, the Question Begged, the Assertion Without Proof, and the Circular Definition implied in ID, which is where the conversation began. You violate your own rules with impunity and never see that you are doing so.

If you assert that Godel forever bars anyone ever, ever, ever from creating a formal system that can prove its own axioms, then you assert an absolute certainty that you say this very formulation proves is impossible.

If you assert that the 2-slit experiment proves that the Law of Identity is forever flawed, will never be solved, can never be reconciled then you have placed an absolute Law of Identity upon this experiment, an irrevocable proof, which you say the 2-slit experiment makes impossible.

These very assertions are type violations with themselves. They are, therefore, contradictions, and therefore, invalid. The viewpoint is faulty.

1,318 posted on 12/03/2002 5:24:05 PM PST by LogicWings
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To: LogicWings; beavus; donh
I just wanted to thank each of you for this identity discussion! I'm learning a lot from all of you!
1,319 posted on 12/03/2002 8:03:54 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; LogicWings; beavus; donh; Tares
I just wanted to thank each of you for this identity discussion! I'm learning a lot from all of you!

ohhh please! like you aren't far more intelligent than you let on! and you forgot Tares. I always forget to ping everybody on these, I just figure they are following along. Like any of this mattters.

1,320 posted on 12/03/2002 9:42:21 PM PST by LogicWings
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